Music: How to Make an Opera

The tuxedoed and evening-gowned audience that filled little Jubilee Hall
at Aldeburgh on Britain's windswept Suffolk coast last week was
beginning to feel self-conscious and uncomfortable. They had just
learned that they could not sit back and listen to the premiere of
Benjamin Britten's sixth opera, Let's Make an Opera!; they had to take
part.

The cast did its best to put them at ease. That technical word aria, it
was explained, is "nothing to be afraid ofit simply means 'song' in
Italian." Ensemble "that's when everybody sings together." By the
time the audience had been let in on a few secrets...